Romania

Road crashes are a significant contributor to the injury burden. The Global Status Report on Road Safety estimates that over 2500 persons die each year on the roads of Romania. Head injury is the most important cause of death from road crashes and indeed up to 60% of Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is due to road traffic incidents.

Currently there is limited information on the prevalence of TBI across Romania. Local data collected at the Department of Neurosurgery in Timisoara Clinical County Hospital indicates that in 2012 a total of 514 TBI patients were admitted. Of these cases 158 were victims of road crashes, 48 were due to aggression and 308 were other types of trauma such as accidents at home and sports injuries.

In the Department of Neurosurgery of Cluj County Hospital, 131 cases of TBI were admitted in 2012, the majority (~64%) were medium TBIs, followed by severe (~24%) and minor TBIs (~11%). Contrary to other statistics, the leading cause of TBI was accidental falls, followed by traffic crashes, physical violence and other causes. Of the 131 cases the majority were male (77.86%), half of which had an urban background (54.9%). Severe traumatic brain injury mortality was higher (54.83%) than medium TBI (7.05%).